On the one hand everything’s going to hell in a hand basket and we have to respond. On the other hand everything is complete and luminous just as it is. The amazing thing is these aren’t just two different views that one can choose to adopt at different times – these are two aspects of reality that are true simultaneously. Of course, this is much easier said than experienced! A number of my recent blog posts have dealt with this apparently... Read more
On New Year’s Eve, 2014, I found out that we have two years – until 2017 – to cut carbon emissions, or risk catastrophic global consequences from climate change. As I heard the sounds of fireworks going off outside, I was reading Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate. A knot started forming in the pit of stomach as I read: “In a 2012 report, the World Bank laid out the gamble implied by [the 2-degree Celsius] target [laid out in a non-binding... Read more
From a very early age I sensed there was something wrong. I remember being around ten years old, cradling the tiny body of a dead bird. It was so small it fit easily in the cup of my child-sized hands. The bird had died after hitting our cabin window, and although I was horrified by its fate and my part in it, however indirect, I also relished the opportunity to view the bird so closely. It was an iridescent yellow-green... Read more
Okay, let me be clear up front: I'm not saying it's good to ignore global warming! I am trying to point out that not all of our reasons for ignoring it are selfish, lazy, or stupid. I've been thinking about this since my post Can We Really Save the World with Lifestyle Change? A Buddhist acquaintance of mine, Satya Vayu, left a long comment on that post expressing many things with which I agree. In fact, he expressed my views pretty perfectly, pointing out that governments and corporations are invested in seeing us continue our consumerist lifestyles, and that,"Changing our way of life radically (in the original sense – fundamentally, from the root) is a necessity, not one strategy of addressing the situation." Read more
Brittany is a new friend of mine who lives outdoors with her big black dog, Padfoot. A couple weeks ago we talked for almost an hour, sitting outside a Starbucks. Her main teaching of the day was this: a big factor in the persistence of homelessness is that people get sucked into self-hate and can't find their way back out. And that one of the most helpful things we can do is express our unconditional love for people no matter what their situation. I met Brittany when she came to my downtown meditation group, and I was impressed with her intelligence and no-nonsense attitude. "Here's someone," I thought, "Who will tell it like she sees it." Read more
Everyone wants answers. We figure answers tell us how to live more happily. Answers let us fix things, while questions are simply problems to be solved with answers. Preferably answers come sooner than later because questions point to limitations in our understanding or ability, and they're often associated with discomfort. I think this view of questions is unfortunate because the process of arousing and engaging a question feels like where all growth and aliveness occurs. We directly encounter life when we recognize something we don't know, when we become curious, when we move forward into life even while knowing we don't have things figured out. It's well worth the discomfort, but there are many reasons we choose, instead, to stay within the limits of what we're sure of - or overestimate how far our understanding extends. Read more
On Wednesday our downtown Zen meditation group had a delightful meeting. Throughout I felt a deepening, visceral conviction that homeless or not, whatever someone's history or current challenges, people are just people. This means they live a complete life with its own rhythm, richness, joys, sorrows, views, philosophies, hopes, regrets... you name it. When I feel concerned about someone's suffering, I realize I sometimes do them the disservice of imagining they are homelessness, or poverty, or mental illness, social isolation, physical pain, or illness. I imagine them with an impoverished life experience centered on their difficulty - an experience somehow utterly alien compared to mine. In turn this makes me think I will be unable to relate to the person I think is suffering - and therefore that any gesture I make based on my human intuition will fail to make a connection or be of any benefit. Fortunately, this whole line of thinking is erroneous - and how joyously so! Read more
I know I am far from the first person to ask this, but can we really save the world - and by that I mean from the ravages of climate disruption - by changing our personal lifestyles? Or is that a story we've been fed by the powers that be in order to shift the burden of responsibility away from those who benefit most from our current economic system? Perhaps it's a story we've created ourselves in order to feel somewhat empowered: We can make a difference in climate change and environmental destruction by doing small, everyday things like changing to LED lightbulbs or taking the bus instead of driving. In any case, I am questioning this story. Part of Zen practice is noticing one's views and recognizing them for what they are: views. That is, not necessarily completely true. In any case not the same thing as reality... Read more
I feel moved to confess something about my own race-based fear, prompted by this passage from a post by Sophia A. Nelson on The Root (www.theroot.com): "In the final analysis, we Americans continue to be cowards about race. We refuse to talk about institutionalized racism and cultural biases that affect our everyday judgments as people. And until we 'go there,' for real, with the support of our political leaders, clergy, educators and industry executives, nothing will change. The fact that we have a black president in America does not mean we live in a 'post-racial' America. It is, however, my ardent hope that Ferguson will teach us, as an American family, something life changing: that stereotypes, and fear of one another, can be deadly. History has proved this with slavery, the Holocaust, ethnic cleansing and war." Okay - for real: In a public encounter with a man I don't know, I experience significantly more fear if the man is black than if he is white. And the fear increases exponentially if I encounter a group of men. Read more
At my Zen center last night I took the risk of departing from our regularly-scheduled programming to bring racism and violence into the mediation hall. This definitely compromised the peacefulness and calm of spiritual community that many of us value as refuge from the turmoil in the rest of the world. However, it seemed like we were missing a practice opportunity if we ignored the news that another white man had been able to shoot and kill an unarmed black... Read more
My Journey of Conscience
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